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Whether you’re buying a car, taking a holiday, or consolidating expensive credit card debt, traditional bank loans with their high interest rates can be off-putting. Peer-to-peer lending platform Zopa offers an alternative: it matches people who want a better return on their investments with those wanting to borrow money, resulting in a better outcome for everyone.

When it first launched in 2005, Zopa was the first company of its kind, but since then the fintech industry has become a hugely competitive space, and Zopa recognises that it’s the quality and focus on customer service that’s going to keep it at the forefront. “I think it’s fair to say that we’re customer obsessed,” said Natasha Wear, Head of Business Operations at Zopa. “It’s at the heart of everything we do. We listen to what our customers want and make sure we can meet and exceed those expectations.”

“Salesforce is the platform we need to succeed. It opens up doors to new opportunities that will further improve service. And its flexibility means that as we evolve as a company, it will evolve with us.”

Over the last decade, Zopa has consistently won awards for excellence in customer service – including winning the Moneywise Customer Service Award for Most Trusted Loan Provider seven times in a row. Plus it has a TrustPilot Score of 9.8.

“Borrowing money can be emotional, and investing money requires a massive amount of trust, so it’s important to offer the support our customers need,” said Amy Miller, Chief Marketing Officer at Zopa. “We invest in training customer service reps to a very high level. They’re not reading from scripts, they’re reacting to the conversation with the customer, so making sure they have the information they need to have useful and effective interactions is key.”

With the company growing rapidly, Zopa wanted to ensure that quality of service was not compromised as it expanded. “With significant customer growth planned, we realised we needed a solution that would scale with us more easily,” said Miller. “We’ve got the best customer service staff, so we wanted to support them with the best tools to help make their job easier.”

In 2016, Zopa rolled out Service Cloud to its customer-facing staff. “We worked with Salesforce partner Pexlify to get us up and running quickly,” said Wear. “Adoption was great – within a month of go-live, our underwriting team was already more productive than before, and without a single blip in service performance along the way.”

Now both underwriting and customer service teams are using Service Cloud to track every customer interaction, resulting in a 360-view of the customer across the business. “We thought about how our business looks to prospective and existing customers, and recognised that to provide a consistent service, we needed underwriters and customer service teams on the same platform,” said Wear.

Ensuring underwriters and service agents can work efficiently is essential to coping with more customers, and with Salesforce, Zopa has automated key processes to achieve productivity gains. “We’ve created workflows that automatically push cases to underwriters depending on their role and capability, so we can provide customers with a decision on their loan faster,” said Wear.

Putting the customer at the heart of its business means letting them choose how they want to engage, and with Service Cloud, Zopa can service its customers via phone, email, or webchat while ensuring the information provided is consistent and accurate. It’s also always looking to learn from these interactions. “If we notice a new frequently asked question coming up, we can add that information to our landing page to make it easier for future customers to find out what they need to know,” added Miller.

With all customer and service data in the same place, Zopa also has better visibility to help it maintain its exceptional service levels. Dynamic dashboards show performance against SLAs, team productivity, and help team leaders identify bottlenecks or issues.

To turn this data into business insights, Service Cloud integrates with Zopa’s internal analytics solution. “We have full visibility of our performance across the company, from customer opinions to employee performance, which helps us keep our products and services relevant, and make improvements where needed.” Based on this intelligence, Zopa is currently exploring two-way SMS messaging and developing an app as additional service tools.

Following its success with its lending platform, Zopa is planning to extend its range of savings and borrowing products with the launch of a next-generation bank in 2018. Salesforce will remain the linchpin in ensuring customers receive good service, as Wear explained: “Salesforce is the platform we need to succeed. It opens up doors to new opportunities that will further improve service. And its flexibility means that as we evolve as a company, it will evolve with us.”